Today’s birthday treats brought me The Da Vinci Code from Shannon (and Jae) and, coincidentally, a gift card from Nick to my office-away-from-home (which will most likely be used to buy coffee rather than books, at least until July when my summer literature classes are over). Books and coffee… two of my favorite things!

Everyone but me seems to have read

The Da Vinci Code

by now. Funny, since I not only had to read Da Vinci’s notebooks for a Humanities class, I’m also wild about symbolism and iconography. However, I have a strong aversion to books like this (media-hyped to death or promoted by Oprah), so I resisted… for three years. Now the movie is coming out and I do want to see it, so I figured I should read the book first. Lucky for me, I have a few days left before it’s all academic reading, all the time, for six weeks.

I began Dan Brown’s tale of secret societies and ancient mysteries while taking (yet another) lovely, delicious-smelling Lush bath with a rather old bath bomb that I found at the bottom of my Lush basket of goodies. I’m not sure which one it was, or even where it came from (a gift hand-delivered from Chicago by Sheri, purchased two years ago on a trip to Washington D.C., mail ordered from Canada any time in the past three years or purchased in London back in 2003), because Lush bath bombs are sold invidually in their signature plastic bags and the color has faded from this one, except for a hot-pink center. I think this was probably one that was purchased in person becaue there isn’t a label identifying it, but it could have fallen off. Anyway…

Despite having clearly passed its peak of perfection, the bath bomb’s scent was delicious and floral (I think), which didn’t really help me figure out which one it was. As it dissolved under running water and the pink center was revealed, I saw something else… a piece of paper, slightly bigger than a fortune in a fortune cookie, with writing on it. Unfortunately, when I tried to free it from the chunk of bath bomb still clinging to it, the paper broke into several pieces. Intrigued, and wondering what special birthday week message has been lurking all this time in my collection of Lush goodies, I carefully collected the soggy bits of paper from the water and pieced together the message:

Hmm. If anyone knows anything about me, it’s that my heart is

wide open to pretty much every feathered, furred and finned creature under the sun, sometimes to the point of foolishness. So much for sage advice. But even though my bath bomb excavation wasn’t as gripping as The Da Vinici Code